001 The Difference Between Coaching, Mentoring and Counselling

[Music] The Caching Crowd podcast is for compassionate, courageous leaders, HR professionals and high achievers. People who are passionate about helping others to find alignment in their lives through coaching and do a thinking of training and developing as a coach. [Music] Welcome and thank you for joining Zoe and I today on the Caching Crowd podcast as we talk to you about the differences between coaching, mentoring and counseling. Yeah, the reason we wanted to talk to you about this today is because as coach trainers and coaches ourselves we know there's a huge amount of confusion about the differences between each of these different approaches. So by sharing with you some of our experiences, some of our thoughts, hopefully we can help you get a better understanding of what each of these are. And in reality they don't all stand in their own definition. I think in practice there is a continuum that we work along and we're going to talk to you a little bit about that as well. So where would you start, Joe? Yeah, we get asked a lot about this don't we? So I think good place to start is the definitions of each of these different things. So from a coaching perspective, the coaching world has a number of different coaching bodies including the International Coach Federation, the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and the Association of Coaching, there's three of that the main bodies in the area and they each have their own individual definitions. And in reality a lot of them are quite long-winded. So we have our own definition of what coaching is. So for me, coaching is about understanding your coachies here and now, how are they experiencing the world? What is it that they would like to achieve in the future? And so there we're talking about their goals and they might be small or significant. And we go into their past in so far as it is relevant to achieving their future. How would you describe it, so? I think similar and I think it's also worth acknowledging that there's different types of cultures. So for us, we know that our coaching style is quite deep rooted. We do help people to understand the root cause of different challenges or obstacles that they're facing in the here and now. But some coaches are very action-focused and don't do much of that past work. They focus more on where are you now, where do you want to be, how are we going to get there? And it's about kind of putting together a roadmap and moving forward. But I think the fundamental distinguishing feature with coaching is that it is future-focused and it is about being with the client and what they want to achieve. So as you said, understanding their here and now and understanding their future state and doing what it takes to facilitate that journey with the client to help them achieve the results that they're looking to get. Yeah, and coaching is about ultimately unlocking an individual's potential, helping them to do that so that they can maximise their performance. But also I think their alignment with their well-being, their emotions. And it's about helping them to learn. It's a co-created learning environment rather than teaching them things. Are there we are helping them to connect with their own inner coach? Yeah, and some of the things that they would do in a coaching relationship would be helping the client understand their values. So things that are really deeply important to them. And I think for me, coaching is about helping to raise the client's awareness so that they have more choices and through choices they can create change. And that for me is like the three step process really that is involved in coaching. Because without awareness, you can't make change. And most people are in the dark. We can't see the world through somebody else's eyes. We look at the world through our own values, beliefs and filters and frames. And so the coach is able to have that objective view and show the client how they're seeing things and open up different windows almost to enable them to see things differently. So I think those are some of the key points of coaching. But what would you say about mentoring? Mentoring traditionally is a process where someone or a relationship where somebody who is more experienced supports somebody who's less experienced through a series of conversations. So you can see the similarity between coaching and mentoring because they're both relationship based and they are both about helping to support somebody's development. And a mentor actually uses coaching skills or great mentors use a coaching skill set. But with mentoring, you may have peer mentors. You might have reverse mentors. I think people used to think about mentors being somebody that was older than somebody else because they're further on in their career. But if we think about technology or new things that coming through, it's not age-related at all. It's purely about somebody that has more experience in something else. And mentoring might last a similar timeframe to coaching. It might even last a bit longer. It really depends on the needs of the individual. But the way that we think about coaching mentoring is being a longer continuum with coaching at one end of the continuum. So in its purest sense, we would call that non-directive. So that means that you're asking questions rather than telling. So we're inquiring with our curiosity. Mentoring in its purest form at the other end of the continuum would be about giving advice. And in reality, in a relationship, that relationship is based on the needs of the individual. So there may be times when you're moving along that continuum of coaching and mentoring. But that really is down to the contract that you have with the individual about how you're going to support them. Yeah. And when we say contract, it's not a formal contract. It's an agreement that you have with your client. So at the start of a coaching relationship, you're spend time working with your client to help them to understand the goals that they want to achieve. And when you have that, you'll do some contracting around how much support and challenge would you like as we go on this journey together. If you get stuck, how would you like me as the coach to handle that? That's what we're talking about when we reference a contract. And I think this important thing about the continuum is knowing where you are on it. So if you've got a contract with your client to coach the answers out of them, you need to know, are you straining too far into the mentoring space? And what would you need to do to bring yourself back coaching as a coach practitioner? Being self-aware is a huge part of the role of being a coach, like knowing where you're out on that continuum, what you're doing at any one particular time and how that is influencing the relationship is fundamental to being an ethical coach. Yeah, and how would you describe the difference between coaching mentoring and then we've got counseling? So how would you describe counseling as different to those? So for me, a big differentiation with counseling is about the place and the state, the emotional well-being that the client is in at the time that they seek the help. I think often clients come to counseling when they're at a place where I don't like the word functioning, but that's the word that you come across quite a lot. But really in struggle, so something that's happening in their lives is affecting and deeply affecting all aspects of their life and they need help in order to be able to move through that difficult phase. There are blurry lines again because it's a continuum. I think a coach's capacity and ability to handle different complexities will grow with experience and over time. But I think all coaches have a responsibility to understand the boundaries of their professional expertise. If somebody arrives at coaching and they want support and they're in therapy, then those two things can co-exist. But as a coach, you would need to check out with your client what is coaching appropriate and what is therapy appropriate because the topics might be very different. And I think working and partnering with your clients to know what is safe and ready for coaching and what is unsafe and not ready for coaching that is more appropriate to go somewhere else. Well, how would you build on that, Joe? Yeah, I think counseling is often sort of a time of crisis, but also it's possible that when somebody is in a coaching relationship that one of the outcomes of coaching might be their own personal realisation that they then would like to seek counseling to continue some of the works and maybe some things have come into their awareness as a result of the coaching conversations that they want to seek alternative support for. So these things can interlink as well and that would be a success from a coaching relationship if the individual then has that awareness and also the readiness to seek additional support. And the coaching bodies that we mentioned earlier on, they all have coaching competency frameworks that coaches would work underneath. So when you're working in your area of expertise, that's part of your professional responsibility as a coach in terms of honouring the framework that we have in place for coaching. It's easier to think that all these things are completely different and to think, right, okay, that's where that stops. But in reality, there are dotted lines, shall we say, between each of these things. And also there's consultancy as well that people think about. So do I need a consultant or do I need a coach? Yeah, and I think the main message in all of this really is a great coaching training will help you to understand the differences and what your client might be looking to receive and knowing that you're working within the framework of ethics of a coaching body. So all those three coaching bodies that you mentioned, yes, they've got the competencies, they've also got the codes of ethics. And that code of ethics helps to guide our behaviour as practitioners to know when a client arrives and they want to work with you. is that something that you want to work with and the client is ready willing and able to work with in a coaching capacity. You don't want to be all things to all people. You know, it's important to make a choice, I think, about are you a coach, are you a mentor, are you a therapist, are you a consultant and be clear with your clients about what you're offering so that they can come with content that's going to be suitable for your service. Then I think when you're within that contract, you get to talk about the boundaries of where your work goes. I remember when we started coaching and people would describe our coaching as quite therapeutic and how that used to freak us out. Now with experience, what we're able to do is sort of confidently be in that space. Know the boundaries of where we were and make decisions about the sort of work that we do with our clients. I think that's really healthy as coach practitioners to be able to know your own boundaries. Yeah. And even within the coaching qualifications that we've run, they are coaching and mentoring qualifications, which tells you that there is real overlap between coaching and mentoring. And often at the start of a coaching relationship, when you meet the client where they're at, they may actually require from you in terms of building rapport, a bit more mentoring at the beginning of the conversation, but over the sessions as they're learning about how to coach themselves through the support of you as the coach, you can move more purely into the coaching relationship. So it is a unique relationship with each person and there will be questions that arise along the way. And that's where great supervision is really useful. So we're coaches, we're coach trainers, we're also supervisors and support people with supervision. So that supervision is about giving supervision, not how we think about it in a workplace. And that's therefore the coaches or the mentors well-being. It's also therefore the developmental support as well to ensure that we keep developing, asking ourselves questions in service of our clients. I think another way to explore this topic is thinking about how people arrive at a coaching qualification. So what you often find is people have very natural coaching skills. So you might be somebody who works in human resources or a line manager, you have great empathy, you're a great listener, you give a lot of time to your team and unbeknownst to you, you're probably using a lot of good raw coaching skills. And you're also probably doing an awful lot of mentoring that's natural as a leader helping to guide people, give advice, supporting them to grow and develop. And I think when you come to a coaching qualification, what you bring are all those raw skills. And then you also get to learn all the things that you haven't been able to see about the coaching professions. There's quite a lot of skill that goes into asking questions and structuring a conversation. And there's also a lot of personal development that happens because what we find when people come to a coaching qualification is often an underlying desire to fix people. We like to be able to support and help people, but in coaching, we hold this fundamental belief that people have the resources within them to be able to grow, develop and overcome challenges. We as coaches don't do any fixing. We just facilitate and enlighten and inspire kind of grow through the way that we work with clients. And there's some unlearning I think that happens in a coaching qualification and also helping to sharpen up the understanding of, okay, so when I'm doing that, actually, I'm mentoring and when I'm doing that, actually, I'm coaching and I want to be able to choose to do more of one or the other based on the needs of the people that I'm working with. Yeah, and if we give an example of that. So if somebody was thinking about training to be a coach, they might go and speak to somebody and say, I think about training to be a coach, I don't know if it's right for me. What do you think? An a mentor might say, well, when I was in your position, I had a similar thought and this is what I did. So if you're thinking the same thing, then I think it would be a good thing for you to do. So the next thing you ought to do is this and this. Let's say that's how you might think about a mentor, whereas a coach would say, tell me more about that. So first of all, they would explore a bit more about their thinking, what they're feeling about that and what they want to do. They might also use something called the grow model, which is a semi-structure for a conversation. So the first of all would establish with the individual, what's your goal? Like, what's the reason you're thinking about this? So what's what would that achieve for you? What's your goal? Then they'd explore the person's reality. So the person might say, well, I'm in a HR role at the moment. I think I'm doing quite a lot of coaching. I really love the developmental side of the role, but I don't really enjoy the disciplinaries or the employee relations side of it. And I'm thinking about longer term and I'm not sure anymore if this is a career that I want to stay in for the longer term. Then they would explore, well, what are what are options do you have and they'd use a number of different questions to do that? And then they would narrow down into next steps, the way forward. So you have the G for the goal, the R for reality, the O for options or opportunities, and the W for way forward. So the coach is, as Zoe said, just facilitating the other person's thinking and helping them to work through and connect into what's important to them and then to form their own next steps. So hopefully that's really given you some ideas about the differences between coaching, mentoring and counseling. And I think the main summary from us is when you when you come into a coaching qualification, you receive skills to help you to be able to work along that continuum and also find out for yourself, like actually what would your style of coaching a mentoring be? Like what is what lights you up? What do you enjoy the most? And also what helps the people that you're working with get the best results because ultimately as you become a coach or you invest more in your mentoring skills, it helps the clients to get the results that they want. And that I think is what draws people into coaching is that desire to serve others and make a difference in the world. Yeah. And if you are a manager, you will be using coaching skills in your conversations. You will be mentoring at times. You might feel that you're counseling, but it's thinking about when when do you refer on? So when do you refer to somebody else? And obviously organizations bring in external coaches and you know, this episode we haven't talked about the difference between coaching internally or using an external coach. We also haven't talked about the difference between one to one coaching and group coaching, which can be extremely powerful. And those are things that will cover in other episodes. But for now, the essence of the difference between coaching mentoring and counseling is that coaching and mentoring exist on a continuum from being non-directive to being directive. And they are future-focused and solution-focused. Whereas counseling is more therapeutic and often sought at the time of crisis or when somebody is still really experiencing and experience that they want to be able to process. Great. So I hope you've really enjoyed our conversation today. 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